


Ecstatic Glossary

by deepandlovelydark



Series: Ecstasy in Cosmogone [13]
Category: Fallen London | Echo Bazaar, MacGyver (TV 1985), Sunless Sea
Genre: Fanwork Research & Reference Guides, Glossary, words words words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-17
Updated: 2017-10-17
Packaged: 2019-01-18 15:16:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12390717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deepandlovelydark/pseuds/deepandlovelydark
Summary: This series has many delicious words: some stolen, some borrowed, some invented.So many, I've made a spoiler-happy list.





	Ecstatic Glossary

Aich’s alloy: copper, zinc and iron, useful for underwater work.

Alteration: when the Underzee changes. Metaphysical storm in a teacup.

Apotheosis: Something, someday, will happen to London.

associative trails: Neath hypertext. 

Beloved blubber: when refined, the source of zee-butter, though zailors generally prefer it straight. Can be eaten either hot or cold, very popular condiment aboard the Clipper.

The Bessemer process: a perfectly historical method of steel-making, involving the application of cold air to molten pig iron so as to draw off the impurities (leading, during some of the early experiments, to rather spectacular volcano-like eruptions with flying scoriae). Invented by Henry Bessemer in 1856, it was just becoming a practical industrial process when London fell.

Blemmigan nectar: gods alone know, but it tastes awful. 

blood-letting: the mechanism which lowers your stats for incautious activities in SS. Also applicable for the consumption of Bottled Oblivion. 

bolegus-timber: mushroom wood. 

Calgary Flames: the Innocent Spy’s favourite hockey team. Not that he has any reason to mention this in 1895. 

cavern-tuna: what you feed mogs. 

Celestial Welshman: Arthur Machen. Bohemian author. 

change war: 1. One of SF’s first really good time wars, as recounted in various Fritz Leiber books. 2. the conflict between cats and snakes. 

"Charivari": post-Fall Punch

chiropterochronometry: er, bats and timekeeping?

collop: slice of meat. 

comci: one of those artistic movements only defined by academics long after its flowering. Generally agreed to have been kickstarted by the Sickly Scotsman’s “The New Arabian Nights”, the definition brushes up against magical realism on one side, Chestertonian paradox on the other, and some kind of five-dimensional Lovecraftian horror on both. 

déjà vu: the subject of much vigorous wrangling at the University, where there’s a department attempting to ascertain whether it’s some sort of psychic occurrence, a temporary displacement with one’s reflection, or something else entirely. 

DDD terms: (permanent) death, dismemberment, drownification. Grounds upon which a Neath contract might reasonably be voided. 

driftweed: the Underzee’s most common variety of edible seaweed, eaten by vegetarians and very, very desperate zailors. 

duck tape: a dreadful anachronism. Made from zee-glue and Parabola linen duck. 

DXS: Department of External Services, the Innocent Spy’s former employers. Seem to take on both internal and international missions without batting an eye. 

First City coin stamp: a joke. 

flectere: the art of mirrors.

flexion: what reflections call us.

fungal mint cake: highly calorific foodstuff, in much demand for Neath adventurers. Sufficiently hearty to ward off the effects of UP, for a day or so. 

freightage: the poor chumps indentured to private companies such as Iron and Misery, who transport the most boring of cargoes. Zee-coal from the Iron Republic, crates of mushrooms to branches of Harbour Provisioners, etc. So pathetic they travel in convoys, and no decent zailor will shame the profession by admitting they even exist. 

Grand Sanction: that which has enabled the Innocent Spy to live through a twentieth century with no space bats or immortality in it. The Phoenix Foundation is responsible for it, though the Spy doesn’t actually know that part.

geas: a bit like an oath, but with more punch and narrative interest to it. 

Golden Passion: one of the few rituals the Herald's taught the Spy. An invocation to Stone, its mistress.

holdfasters: in London, weddings are for those who can afford them. Those who can't, hold fast.

INCURSION: an unpleasant but not lethal random encounter in the Iron Republic.

Innocent Spy: original Neath work-name for one MacGyver. Accidental time-traveller, brilliant engineer, and oh yes, also a spy. 

jagen: a rather specialised type of zee monster-hunting.

jati: borrowed from the Hindi word for caste, appropriated by Londoners to mean something more like untouchable. That which happens in London entirely outside of the Bazaar’s remit, and officially does not exist. Examples of jati would include driftweed sellers, zailors who jump ship, the chap who’s next-door neighbours with The Most Boring Man in London.

knitting: something the Innocent Spy does to make a jumper. Something the Herald does to upconvert Whispering Hints and Cryptic Clues. 

Kabulstan: a country in central Asia. Location of the Ammukash valley and the Mountain of Youth, better known to Neath inhabitants as Stone. 

Last Night’s pudding: the flaming pudding traditionally eaten twelve days after the first lacre-fall. Society folk rather look down at this; Dockers love it. 

late-reign: 1. anything that’s happened in the Neath since the Innocent Spy arrived, more or less. 2. for later historians, the fin de siecle period of the Traitor Empress’ reign. What precisely this entails is a matter of hot debate amongst the handful of academics permitted to study the matter. 

Lazarette: ship's workshop.

Lillywhite’s: the bible of cricket.

Literary Postman: Anthony Trollope, Society author and postal worker. His last public act before a graceful retirement to Nuncio was pressing forward the decimalisation of Echoes, making London’s currency minimally less terrifying.

Her Majesty's Jollies: for when the Special Constables just won't cut it.

niddle-fish: small and sharp-tipped. Out in the Chelonate, they're used for a version of darts which must be smelt to be believed.

Norton: those who would take a Liberty. The umbrella term for a loose association of anti-Fall ideologies, ranging from those who insist that London never left the Surface, to those who insist it’s fated to return. Originally referred to a number of activists from Spite who tried to bring the Empress to court, on the grounds that she lacked the legal authority to bring their street to the Neath. You can usually find one at the Square of Lofty Words. 

obscurity: 1. to posies and potential posies [every single PC], the most horrifying fate imaginable in London society, only undertaken by the maddest of Seekers. 2. to everyone else in London (of whom there’s rather a lot), an exchange in which one trades away a never-gonna-happen future of Making Waves in exchange for the safety of being Closest To a particular faction. This is how random zailors are closest to Dockers and so forth. 

The Penniless Archeologist: loosely based on Eduard Glaser, the Archeologist is a late-19th century Surface scholar attempting to find the location of the Garden of Eden. His map, a hundred years later, leads the Unimaginative Assassin to start investigating a mountain in Kubulstan…

Peiriannwr: Welsh for engineer. 

posy: a more amusing and period-appropriate bit of slang for Persons of Some Importance than POSI. 

Phoenix Foundation: the Innocent Spy’s employers. Partly a do-gooding charity, partly an agency for plausibly deniable intelligence work. 

"Pinksaw’s Guide to Edible Fungi": exactly what it sounds like. 

quirks: the measure of a man. Or woman or ambiguous one. 

rat extract: Neath Bovril. 

red-handled knife: the Innocent Spy’s tool of choice. 

reflection: that which you see in a mirror. May occasionally be sentient. 

reppeljack: newly Fallen. Mildly offensive. 

ritual: the Herald’s all-purpose term for anything quasi-magical, esp. for her ship-keeping prayers to Stone, Salt and Storm. (She usually refrains from telling the Innocent Spy the proper names, both for safety and to head off arguments about how silly the proper names are.)

“The Sapphire”: Fallen London’s equivalent of “The Gem”. 

scintillack: that blue stuff that helps you shoot things.

secret sharing: a ritual to improve one’s stats, by offering up a secret to another party. Usually undertaken as a matched set, unless a Captain is involved (it is the duty of Captains to give, not to take).

Sickly Scotsman: Robert Louis Stevenson. Author, affiliation indeterminate (he notoriously cycled through Closest To on a regular basis.)

Slug and Mushroom: a terrible chain of pubs owned by Murgatroyd’s, found across the Underzee. 

solacefruit extract: sweet substance akin to stevia, usually used to flavour Darkdrop coffee.

speaking tubes: a piece of historical accuracy! How people at opposite ends of a steamship can talk to each other. 

"Sporting Times": The name the Pink ‘Un is forced to trade under, in Fallen London.

suchenroman: literature dealing with Seekers. Only became popular in late-reign London, and even then only as penny-dreadful tosh, more illegal than red honey. Ironically, due to their confiscation on sight, one of the few forms of popular Neath literature available for Surface historians after the Grand Sanction. 

Surfacer: 1. Someone who lives on the Surface and has never seen the Neath. 2. A Londoner stupid or optimistic enough to keep insisting they’re going to return to the Surface, one of these days…

“Tasted on the wind”: depending who’s talking, either foretold or made a lucky guess.

telesthetic: what the Student calls telepathy, cos it sounds cooler. 

Tireless Mechanic: the Innocent Spy’s later work-name, by the conclusion of "Fulgent Engineering". 

travel slate: the thing the Herald chalks courses on for her shipmates to follow. 

treachery-tangle: what a certain incarnation of the Nameless Doctor would call, "wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey".

trionfi: the Herald’s predictive tarot games, in which she studies the Hours.

tree-effigy: Guy Fawkes Day not being on anyone’s mind these days, there’s now a Neathmas tradition among the lower classes to make a flammable effigy of the Consort. Other popular candidates for the effigy are the Traitor Empress, especially hated zee-captains, and, if you’re feeling especially daring, one of the Masters. 

tynged: Welsh version of a geas.

unhappenings: the crest of an approaching Alteration.

Unimaginative Assassin: Surface name Murdoc, the Innocent Spy’s nemesis. 

Venderbight: that Tomb Colony I can never remember how to spell.

void-slipped: the usual fate of reflections, when no one's looking at them.

witchcraft: the word the Innocent Spy starts employing for engineering that works, despite it not making a deuced bit of sense.

zee-code: something the Captain is constantly blathering about, and which may or may not exist.


End file.
